At the Bellevue Botanical Garden, Christmas lights show off perennials against a stunning sky.

In 1992, Cal and Harriet Shorts donated their home and 7 1/2 acres of evergreen trees, azaleas and rhododendrons to the city of Bellevue. Their home now serves as the Visitor's Center and Gift Shop, and the Shorts' original plantings form the framework for much of what has followed. The city of Bellevue bought up the adjacent land to expand the original gift into a 36-acre botanical garden, which has become the manicured jewel in the midst of green and rolling Wilburton Hill Park.

In its first year, 5,000 visitors came to the new garden. Ten years later, garden manager Tom Kuykendall is expecting 300,000 people to troop through. This popularity is due in part to Bellevue's rapid evolution from suburb to big city, but also because so many people are drawn to the serene ambience of the garden. Its blend of naturalistic areas and botanical display is sought out not only by gardeners intent on learning about alpine, Chinese or kitchen gardens, but also by those who simply seek quiet and solitude in strolling forested pathways, listening to the waterfalls and walking beneath 50-year-old rhododendrons.

Now In Bloom Astilbes are long-flowering, slug-resistant plants that do best in damp soil and partial shade. They are ideal for planting alongside ponds, where their plume-like flowers are reflected in the water. The flower heads dry to buff and then brown, accenting the attractive, spreading foliage into the winter months. A. 'Sprite' has feathery shell-pink flowers; A. 'Irrlicht' has dark-green foliage with large, white plumes of flowers.

The Shorts' mature plantings are one reason the garden seems far richer than its brief 10 years would lead you to expect. Another is that several different landscape architects and designers have been involved in planning and developing the garden, as well as a variety of partners such as the Northwest Perennial Alliance, the Eastside Fuchsia Society and Bellevue Utilities Department. Volunteers put in 13,000 hours of work every year planting and tending the gardens. Kuykendall thinks these inspired and varied contributions are what give the garden its personal rather than institutional feel.

This isn't a grand landscape, but rather a series of gardens clustered around the original house and layered out toward the woodlands. The residential scale makes it easy to translate what you see to your own garden. And you can actually find most of what grows there at commercial nurseries. The waterwise garden illustrates which plants thrive beneath the shade of tall, rooty conifers. The newly expanded groundcover hillside shows low plantings ideal for familiar difficult conditions such as steep slopes, deep shade and full sun. "The scale of the perennial border got a little out of hand," admits Kuykendall of the amazingly complex and beautiful border, which seems to have grown every time I visit. Now it spills across the pathway down the hill and burgeons out in each direction, more a wide wave of froth and color than a self-contained border.

While there are plenty of good reasons to visit any day of the year, next Saturday the public is invited to a free, family-oriented bash to celebrate the garden's 10th birthday. Experts on dahlias, fuchsias, perennials and waterwise gardening will be available to answer questions and there will be kids' activities. BBG is at 12001 Main St. in Bellevue. For a schedule and directions, call 425-451-3755, or visit the Web page at www.bellevuebotanical.org.

Don't Miss

• The freshly planted display garden designed by Glenn Withey and Charles Price, in the beds around the Visitor's Center.

• The watercourse that cascades the entire length of the groundcover garden, with an imposing new waterfall.

• The fat bronze toad on the entry terrace, sculpted by artist Lon Brusselback.

• The display of hardy fuchsias.

Still to come: an expansion of woodland trails and a new Visitor's Center designed by the Miller/Hull Partnership.

Valerie Easton is manager at the Miller Horticultural Library. Her book, "Plant Life: Growing a Garden in the Pacific Northwest" is an updated selection of her magazine columns. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com.